Biography

Syaheerah (Sha-hee-ra) Lebai Lutfi received both her DEA and Ph.D degrees (with distinction Cum Laude) from Grupo de Technología del Habla (GTH) – Speech Technology Group, University Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, in June 2013, under the supervision of Prof. Juan Manuel Montero and Prof. Fernándo Fernández Martínez (University Carlos III, Madrid). Her general research interest is Human-Computer Interactions, specifically focusing in Affective Computing (behaviour analytics, personality, culture, mood and emotion analysis & modelling). In short, her main research question revolves around “how to make machines more emotionally (and perhaps culturally) sensitive to users?”. Her doctorate Thesis concerns the design and evaluation of an emotional model– that was put to test with several applications in the spoken language dialogue domain. She also holds a certification in Health Informatics through KSU (Riyadh) and OHSU (Oregon) joint initiative.

During Jan – April 2011, she did a research stay at MACS, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, as a visiting researcher where she was involved with the European-funded FP7 project eCUTE. eCUTE has eight European and Japanese partners and aims on developing innovative technologically-enhanced learning approaches in cultural understanding and sensitivity that will help to deal with cultural problems, targeting young adults & children. She is also among the ten percent of young academicians in the country that was selected for the CEO@Faculty 2.0 program, an industry-university joint initiative founded by the Ministry of Education Malaysia — which granted her the chance as a visiting lecturer at Intel Microelectronics Penang (Oct – Feb 2018), the largest in Asia.

Before entering the research field, she spent three years in the industry – as an IT Executive at MaybanLife Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, and Systems Analyst at National Poison Centre, USM, Penang. She is currently the Program Manager for Industrial Training, Student Activities & Alumni under the academic section, and the advisor for the term’s CS Society.